


Of Porcelain and Spider Silk

by hotaruyy



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Gen, Healing, Hurt, Hurt Clint Barton, POV Clint Barton, Phil coming back doesn't magically make everything better for once, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Coulson is alive revelation, Post-Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 10:50:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13611807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotaruyy/pseuds/hotaruyy
Summary: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great GatsbyIt’s tiring. He’s tired. He shuts his eyes and tries to ignore the outline of Phil that is burned behind his eyelids.





	Of Porcelain and Spider Silk

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this helped me get through some hard times, and I hope reading this would bring you some sort of catharsis.
> 
> Hope you aren’t misled by the first line, this is all from Clint’s perspective.
> 
> I think in this fic Clint is dealing with mental health issues to some extent? But I’m not sure exactly what. I just wrote this when I myself was struggling. So please proceed at your own discretion.

 

i.

Phil is moving into the Tower. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to think about that.

 

ii.

He jerks upright in his bed, instinctively, desperately untangling his limbs from the sweat-soaked sheets. Movements fitful and mechanical, he strips and pulls on another shirt. Somehow, he ends up on the range shooting until his arms ache, pushing until he feels his muscles on the borderline of tearing, bleeding.

He shoots and shoots until one of the targets crash to the floor in a shower of sparks, and even then, he continues shooting.

 

iii.

Sometimes he feels like his life has been reduced to the quiet hiss of the bowstring in exchange for food and shelter. He doesn’t know when he’s going to be kicked out of the Tower. He doesn’t know why he’s still on the team. What he _does_ know is why Tasha keeps directing worried glances at him, but honestly, it’s okay.

 

iv.

He can hear Phil’s heavier-than-before breathing in living room on the common floor. He turns and walks back into the elevator.

 

v.

In his nightmare, Phil is shivering, drawing in shuddering breath after shuddering breath. There’s something blue in front of his eyes, and it makes the stains on Phil’s white shirt come out as an indecipherable colour.

As soon as he wakes up, he heads downstairs to the common floor, wanting to catch Tasha on her way to the gym. Walking into the kitchen, he nearly stumbles when he spots Phil looking up at his entry, mid-sip. A hand lightly spotted with familiar freckles lowers a cup.

"Coffee?" Phil asks, a touch hesitant, smile quirking his lips.

He tries to smile at Phil, he really does, but by the way Phil's own smile falters he knows he didn't really reach it.

 

vi.

His blood is pounding with adrenaline. The team is on the verge of losing this fight, and for one simple instant, he manages to forget.

 

vii.

Tasha steps into his room and wraps herself around his body. Nothing has happened the entire day, and he’s stayed under the covers even though it itches at him. She tucks his head against her neck, and he tries to curl into himself.

 

viii.

They're done for. Painfully shredded apart; silently withering in broad daylight. It'll take more than what they have to sift through the shards and start over.

 

ix.

He forgot to put on his arm guard today, and he’s only noticing it now.

Ha.

Hawkeye.

Blood is welling out of the large graze on his forearm, slow and steady. Little spots all over that patch of skin. Red. He wraps it up tight and careful, exactly the way he should. That night when he changes the dressings, it’s still bleeding anyway.

 

x.

The mattress is rough and bumpy, and smells vaguely like it’s sat in drain water and cigarette smoke for a decade. The rain goes pitter patter on the chipped windowsill; the wind tears into the room through a crack. Chapped lips drag across his skin, and he shivers uncontrollably.

 

xi.

"Talk to me." Gone is the calm and self-assured tone, and he can't shake the feeling that Phil's begging, that there are pleads and doubts in Phil’s eyes. It’s a jarring thing to experience, and it shakes him up more than he would have anticipated.

So much has changed. It’s tiring. He’s tired.

He shuts his eyes and tries to ignore the outline of Phil that is burned behind his eyelids.

 

xii.

Phil spars with Tasha for the first time since he moved in.

 

xiii.

He’s retching, heaving his lunch into the toilet bowl. Images are flickering across his vision, wheat fields of fletchings sticking up in the air, ripe for plucking.

Wiping his mouth, he reaches out to flush, then returns to his pile of blankets in the vents.

 

xiv.

Tasha dragged him out of the ceiling and has trapped him between Thor and Steve at the dinner table. They’re having shawarma and it tastes like dust on his tongue. Tony is waving his hands in the air and spatters of sauce land on the table; Thor is loud and oblivious as always; Steve is earnestly serving salad onto his plate and talking at him; Tasha is amused at something Tony said; Phil has stopped berating Tony; and Bruce. Bruce is smiling, but he can read the flash of concern in the doctor’s gaze when his eyes slide away from Phil’s.

He doesn’t need it, so he stretches his mouth around his food and nods at whatever Steve is saying.

 

xv.

He wonders if people can be addicted to sadness.

 

xvi.

The three of them are sitting in the living room, and none of them are watching the movie playing on the screen. He contemplates asking Tony to make him spider silk bowstrings that could double as garrottes. How much stress can you put on spider silk before it breaks?

 

.

.

.

 

xcix.

It’s been 879 days since Phil’s come back from the dead.

 

c.

He grins at Phil’s “good morning”.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a Clint-inspired poem that I was gonna put into my [poem collection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13475763/chapters/30896598). And then it blew up into a small fic.
> 
> You’re all lovely, thanks for reading!


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